


Asgard's Cradle

by Keenir



Series: Final Battles [1]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Thor Movies, Avengers reference, Gen, Jane's car too, reference to Aegir, reference to the Lizard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-23 00:18:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/pseuds/Keenir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Asgard-Jotunheim War ended far worse, leaving, today...</p><p>The two princes of Asgard, half of the Realm's population, and the desire to explore afield.</p><p><i>Планета есть колыбель разума, но нельзя вечно жить в колыбели </i><br/><i>"A planet is the cradle of mind, but one cannot live in a cradle forever."</i><br/>-Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky.</p><p> <br/><span class="small">(does "major character death" apply when it was a thousand years ago and offstage?  I'll assume it does)</span></p>
            </blockquote>





	Asgard's Cradle

_Mine was a lonely throne as we all stood on alert: myself, the few of court who had not followed the Allfather into battle, a scattered few outside of Gladsheim; and the fourth generation of Einherjar, left behind as our only defense._

_Odin my Odin sent the infant via messenger - I know her name, she who kept Odin from figiting in the longer lulls between battles, who filled herself with him and his words, who carried the baby Loki to me - and did her duty. Her name was Syg- or Sig-...Sigfrieda? No, not that. I thanked her. Before I could say another thing, the Jotunns were here. They had followed her, a last gasp, a final thrust before their kind accepted inevitable defeat. A surge to declare they were still a mighty force to be reckoned with, to shriek their cries at what Odin had done in their temple - his messenger woman told me that much - and claw at Asgard to make us pay._

_They were few in number, but they bore the greatest arms, weapons greater than any but for the Casket itself. These were Farbouti's soldiers, not Laufey's, then._

_Only four survived the winnowing, and none of them had grown in Jotunheim. Myself. Heimdall. And two infants...one of whom had been born on Jotunheim, his skin an infant's pink. Part of me wondered if this was Odin's bastard by the messenger, that act profaning the Jotunheim temple. Part of me feared something darker afoot. But I let it live - there were enough corpses for me to attend to the removal of, that I did not seek to make more work._

_The Einherjar perished as their grandfathers' grandfathers had nearly done: frozen solid, all; a few graced with clawings across them._

_The Jotunns have not been back since. Nor has Vanaheim deigned to see how I fare. The other Realms care even less._

_Heimdall has never told me what became of Jotunheim._

_Or of Odin._

**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**

Frigga knows that her maternal care for Loki, as she named the boy, had grown as time slowly distanced them from the end of so much of Asgard. And it had helped Thor not feel so alone, not be so alone.

"Mother, can we go in the Armory?" Thor asks her one day. That he felt a need to prefix his request with 'mother' made her nervous before he even said 'Armory.'

"Why would you go in there?" Frigga asks, her flesh chilled so swiftly her fear is almost burning her.

"We've never been," Thor says, and to hear him say it is to know perfectly well that it is a truth so unvarnished that the eyes water to look anywhere near it.

Once she had looked without fear into the days yet to come, scanning the years as yet unborn for signs that all was unfolding as should be. But that was during the time when Asgard had teemed with men and women. Now the glimpses sent her to her room so she could not frighten the children as she saw ancient terrors awakening to find nothing remained to send them back down, saw armies of reptiles overcoming a Realm, glimpsed a chance of redemption in that army's conflict with the ancient terrors. _But I must wait until Thor and Loki are old enough,_ Frigga knew then, back then.

 _And now they have reached that age,_ she knew also, from Thor's question and his answer to hers. Which led her thoughts to what lurked - _half-lives, half-mad, entirely in writhing suffering_ \- within the Vault which had been built four ages ago, for the containment of prisoners. The Vault had been there when Asgard was no more than a few homes and no great Wall to its name.

Her choice of name for Loki had not been accidental. Nor had she used foreseeing.

Resolved to tell them one time and not repeat herself, the Allmother asks Thor, "Where is your brother?"

Thor frowns and looks to both sides, as though expecting to see Loki there. "He was right...oh. I will go get him," and he runs off, hollering his brother's name at the top of his lungs, for all that they are both grown men now. A thousand years since War's end.

She sits, most days, countless days, upon the throne - _my throne, but only made so as Odin prepared to go off to war one last time._ Sits there because no matter where she sits or stands in all of Asgard, she cannot escape one reminder or another of just how much wreckage has endured since the War's end.

When a civilization builds structures to last, the unspoken corollary is that its ruins will be likewise enduring. In the case of Asgard, its citizens were likewise built to last...from Queen to Gatekeeper, in their case. _And now my sons will be lasting._

"I found him!" Thor says with clear pride as he half-leads, half-herds his brother into the throne room.

"You assume I was lost," Loki says, but without venom, having never had any to teach him - however indirectly - in sarcasm, poetry, or invective. "Yes, Allmother?" he asks.

"I have spoken to you both on the role of heroes," Frigga says, standing up.

Both boys nod.

"And you both wish to see the other Realms as something other than bedtime stories and points of light overhead."

More nods.

"Then this is my present to you," she says. "Come. Walk me to the Bifrost Observatory."

Dutiful sons, they comply, obey, accompany. Past the missing doors of Gladsheim and the upended earth that stops just short of the field of stones. A deity she may be, but she still whispers a little prayer that Forseti guide their minds where and when she cannot.

Onto the Bifrost, which has long since repaired itself, for that was its design.

If ever there had been a whisper of a thought in either boy's head about if the Queen and the Gatekeeper kept one another company in anything but a companionable way, neither had spoken of it...if they could grasp that bodies could do that at all.

"My Queen," Heimdall said as she approached with the boys. "My princes," he added.

Frigga placed one hand on each boy's shoulder, even at their height, even at their maturity. She pocketed away any tears which threatened to come, and resolved to permit them fall only when she was alone in her room once more. "My sons wish to see another Realm, Heimdall," Frigga said. "Find somewhere good."

"Thy will be done," Heimdall says, turning to raise his sword for entry into the Observatory for the first time in a long time, even for one as much an object of history as he, the watcher of so much unfolding. And while he lacked the Allmother's powers of foreseeing, Heimdall knew that an age was coming to an end. And he wondered how much of the new age could be seen at all.

The link was opened, the route ready. "It is safe," Heimdall said, his voice carrying to the princes even over the noise of the machinery which had been sleeping for so very long.

"Have fun," Frigga wished them both, the same thing she had said on days when Thor and Loki wished only to run off ahead and play on what grass and dirt there was, or play lurkings in the shadows of derelict buildings. She knew how that would be the thought passing through their minds, and had chosen it for precisely that reason, that purpose, for the aim that her boys would squeeze her hands and smile at her, would thank Heimdall, and run towards the light which would take them away.

**~~~~~~**  
 **MIDGARD**

Even as he righted himself to his feet, Loki was looking up the way they had come. _'Find somewhere good' was what our mother had said. Why would Allmother Frigga say that? Unless..._ and more urgent thoughts filled his mind as his ears picked up on a sound. 

First came Thor, crossing over to join him where he stood. But there was something else, a noisy noise which made him curse the paucity of sounds in Asgard.

"We should move," Loki says, pretty sure he was hearing something in the winds, something moving and quite possibly hungry.

Thor set one hand on Loki's shoulder. "What is there to fear, brother? We shall have a grand adventure here, and you listen -"

"Yes?" Loki asked, aware that Thor had vanished back into the sandstorm with a strange sound.


End file.
